Grimm: Going home helps the healing

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By CHRIS GRIMM of the Journal Star

Journal Star

By CHRIS GRIMM of the Journal Star

Posted May. 3, 2014 at 10:25 PM

By CHRIS GRIMM of the Journal Star

Posted May. 3, 2014 at 10:25 PM

EDITOR’S NOTE:The home of Chris Grimm, Journal Star assistant news editor, was damaged during the November tornado in Washington. He is sharing his story with periodic updates about his family’s experience.

It’s a new chapter.

After five months of living in an apartment in Morton — actually five months and two days — we moved back into our house.

On April 19, we loaded clothes, toys, a dog and other necessities into several car loads and returned to Washington. We stayed the night in our house for the first time since a tornado ripped through central Illinois on Nov. 17.

On Easter Sunday, we woke up in our home. That’s a good feeling.

It’s good to be home.

It’s not the same, though. Not yet.

For a long time, I thought that once

we got back home, it would be over.

I’m not sure if it dawned on me that Sunday morning or perhaps during one of the trips back and forth to the apartment on the day before, but this journey is far from over.

Pain. That’s the word that pops into my head when I think about the days following the Nov. 17 tornado.

It wasn’t so much physical pain. My son, my wife and I were unhurt when the tornado blitzed through our neighborhood in Washington — our house damaged, but still standing.

But thinking about the days and weeks which followed, I can still feel the pain.

Five months of hurt, actually.

I say this a lot, because it’s true: We were lucky. More than 1,000 homes in Washington, East Peoria, Roanoke and Pekin were damaged or destroyed. My home was damaged and has been uninhabitable. My mother-and-father-in-law’s home was destroyed as was the home of my sister-in-law and her family. No one was physically hurt.

But all nine of us have lived with some form of pain for five months.

We are far from alone. Thousands of people affected by the tornado have lived with pain.

It’s hard to explain just what that pain is. It’s just there. You feel it when you think of the tornado and the days and weeks following. You feel it when you drive through affected areas. You feel it when you drop your kid off at school. You feel it when you go home each day to the home that really isn’t your home.

For a stretch this past winter when we lived in the apartment in Morton, I found myself not wanting to go to Washington. At least once or twice, I went a week without visiting the house. Snow piled up on the driveway. Each time, I would visit, the pain would flood back.

Page 2 of 4 - As the winter dragged on, I forced myself to take my son to school in Washington and check on the house when needed. Slowly, I’ve watched a transformation take place.

And slowly, the pain I feel continues to heal. With every damaged house repaired, with every new construction being built and with every family moving back home the pain heals.

Seeing the healing is intoxicating.

On several occasions, I have driven past homes that I know were completely destroyed and have been stunned to see a new structure standing. There is a stretch on Dallas Road where houses are seemingly popping up overnight. I’ve even questioned myself a couple times, “Wasn’t that house leveled?”

It’s kind of weird, but watching workers standing on top of a damaged roof putting on shingles is a beautiful sight.

The same can be said with the installation of new siding. I can’t help but feel invigorated when I see all of the new colors popping up in my neighborhood. It’s like the subdivision has declared in unison, “We’re going to spice this place up with color!”

My neighbors chose a blue siding. We weren’t sure about it at first, but it’s growing on us. There’s a green house a couple blocks over. We’re staying with the same shade of tan we had before the tornado. Nothing fancy, but what we like.

It’s fun to look at a house that was damaged and think, “Hey, that window wasn’t there before.” People are changing their homes to best fit their needs. There’s nothing wrong with that. My in-laws have considered building a different house on top of their old footprint. One that fits them better. They are also thinking strongly about adding a storm shelter.

We made a few changes to our home: added canned lights in the living room; added chocolate brown, cardinal red and navy blue to our walls; put in all new flooring.

We’ve tried to have fun with the restoration. One room has a red wall with a white outline of the St. Louis arch. Inset in the arch is a relief of a St. Louis Cardinals bird on a bat.

But the biggest change came downstairs, which was not affected by the tornado.

In the late summer, early fall of 2012, my wife and I decided we wanted to finish our basement. After soliciting three bids from contractors, we selected the one right in the middle. We liked what Scott Coppejans had to say. We also liked that he was willing to work on our terms: slowly.

Page 3 of 4 - For about a year, Scott worked on the basement on and off with our blessing. As the work progressed, we became more anxious for the finished project. In late October, early November of last year, we gave Scott the go ahead to get it done.

Heading into the second half of November, he had the drywall up. The basement wasn’t going to be done before Thanksgiving, but Christmas was a real possibility.

Hours after the tornado struck on Nov. 17, I found myself wandering the neighborhood aimlessly. I had my cellphone in my hand and had tried frantically calling and texting family and friends, but cell service was down.

A couple hours after the tornado I received my first call, it was from Scott. I immediately launched into how much damage the house had sustained. He politely stopped me and asked what was important: “Is everyone OK?”

It was my first contact with anyone outside the disaster area. It made an impression on me. Scott was the first to offer us help. Not as a contractor, but as a friend. He was there to help us get the get the house boarded up.

Scott quickly took over the repairs on the house. He was key navigating the insurance adjustment process.

He also finished the basement. When we moved back into the house on Easter Sunday, we moved back to almost double the space we had before the tornado.

Three days after we moved back into the house, a new garage door was put on. I can’t say I miss the blue spray-painted “OK” that was scrawled on the old door the night of the tornado.

The roof is fixed and so is the siding.

The biggest obstacle we have in front of us is the lawn. It’s a big obstacle everyone is facing. There seems to be no easy fix to get the debris, glass and insulation out of the ground. The glass is ground in. No amount of raking seems to get it all.

We’ve heard solutions that range from running a vacuum cleaner over your yard to digging up four inches of grass to putting an inch of dirt on the existing sod. No solution seems perfect.

Two houses down, we’ve watched a neighbor tackle the problem her way. Every day she goes out into her yard and painstakingly cleans a small portion of the yard by hand.

She’s relentless.

She won’t give up.

In another five more months, I would have no problem walking barefoot in her yard.

My son, who’s 8, has never had problems with storms. The day of the tornado, he was unfazed. It didn’t bother him. In the months after the tornado, while we heard stories of children having nightmares, he slept through the night.

Page 4 of 4 - All winter I wondered how we would do once the spring storm season hit. Would the roof leak? Would the siding stay on? Are the trusses really secure?

On Monday night, we found out.

Around dinnertime, I found myself standing on the deck mesmerized by the clouds. After a while it stayed calm and looked like the storm would pass right over. I asked my son to come out and have a look. He had been nervous about the storms, and I thought it would be good for him to see the clouds go by harmlessly.

He wasn’t out there 10 seconds and the wind picked up drastically. Cardboard, wood, siding, tarps — debris originally created by the tornado — went flying across my backyard.

It was a flashback for both of us.

I sent him downstairs and then ran outside to find my wife who was walking the dog. She was almost home after dodging debris on the sidewalk.

As far as spring storms go, it was a minor one. The house stood up just fine as did my wife.

My son and I took a hit, however.

On and off through the evening, he wanted to listen to the weather radio. I kept looking out the window to check the clouds.

It’s good to be home, but we aren’t done with this journey.

Chris Grimm is assistant news editor for the Journal Star. He can be reached at cgrimm@pjstar.com.